Sam and I just returned from lunch at BAMN, a new automat-style eatery in the East Village.
The automat was a restaurant, popular through the 1950's, that served hot food on real plates via a vending machine. BAMN borrows this idea but offers no nostalgia for the automat era. Instead, fluorescent pink signage and funky food concoctions rule the roost. Bamn is in a perfect location for drawing drunken hipsters and NYU students with pockets full of quarters, and I'm pretty sure it will do quite well, at least for a while. I think there should be a BAMN pet shop, where you enter like 900 quarters and then open a door and retrieve whichever puppy you want.
The food is a little on the, um, absurdly fatty side to eat on a regular basis. I had what was essentially an eggroll stuffed with macaroni and cheese. Still, nothing costs more than $2. They also had chicken wings, burgers, pork buns, peanut butter and jelly empanadas, donuts that Sam said were undercooked, and the like.
The automat is featured somewhat prominently in all its technicolor glory in the Doris Day/Cary Grant comedy That Touch of Mink, which will be shown on TCM this Sunday at 8 p.m. . . and since I've never seen the whole thing, I will be DVR'ing that and The Simpsons concurrently on my main TV while watching the first 15 minutes of Sunday Night Football in my bedroom.
4 comments:
If you live in the NYC metro area (or the East Village), and you find yourself at BAMN!, I recommend the roast pork bun. The bun has a pretty bagel-sheen on the outside, is fluffy on the inside, and the pork is tender and tasty. Mmm. You could get the same thing in Chinatown for $.50, but you don't get to pull a lever in Chinatown.
Pizza dumplings were perdy good, super salty--which is never a problem for me.
Japanese donuts were crispy and tasty, but fried at a temp too high. They were, as Carli mentioned, undercooked in the middle. I finished them anyway of course.
Did you take anything home to Wendall?
You are making me hungry!
Where's mine?
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